‘What makes you think you’re being lied to?’ Persey dared.
‘Everything. Everything makes me think I am being lied to.’
Dido stood up again. ‘I’m going to see if Jack’s all right. Excuse me.’
When Dido had left, Persey didn’t dare ask him outright what he suspected Jack of doing. She couldn’t. She tried to eat but couldn’t do that either and instead she breathed out audibly.
‘I can see the distrust you all have of me,’ Stefan said solemnly. ‘And I want you to know,’ he continued, ‘that your doubts aboutme are unfounded.’ She had wanted so much to trust him. But Doctor Durand’s words that she should trust no one were still ringing in her mind. Often she felt she knew her own mind but … not in this. It had been so long. It had been too long. She didn’t know Stefan now. As much as she wanted to, she didn’t. She hadn’t known him then, not really.
Persey watched him warily and he appeared to struggle with his words, trying again to say the same thing differently. ‘I want you to know that I am on your side; that I want this war no more than you do, that I have no hidden agenda.’
‘Really?’ she asked.
‘Really,’ Stefan said.
‘Why have you got a bee in your bonnet about Jack?’ she asked.
He smiled at her phrase and then looked at her seriously. ‘If there is a reason for someone to question Jack – not me, I am grateful interrogation is not my role – but one of my superiors or someone worse. Someone … with different methods—’
‘Different methods?’ she questioned. ‘Do you mean the Gestapo? The Gestapo is in Guernsey?’ She looked at her plate but she wasn’t really seeing it. She’d heard terrifying rumours of what men in the Gestapo did to extract information in other occupied countries. Inhumane, terrible things.
‘Do you think,’ he continued, not quite answering her question, ‘they will do what I have just done? Or do you think they will put Jack through the worst experience of his life? Do you think they will make him a cup of tea, or do you think they will make him cry for his mother?’
‘Good God, Stefan,’ Persey cried out in horror.
‘You need to trust me. I cannot protect you, any of you, if I do not know the truth.’
‘It’s not your job to protect us.’
‘I know, but I want to. We were once friends. I want it to be as it once was between all of us. All those summers we had together. The ones we’ve missed since.’
Was it safe to trust Stefan? She wanted to so badly. But Jack’s life was at stake if she did.
‘If it hadn’t been so long,’ she replied simply.
Stefan pushed his chair back and moved towards her, kneeling next to her chair. ‘I am not a Nazi,’ he said. ‘Do you need me to keep saying it to you?’
Persey could feel the tears in her eyes and hated herself for it. ‘No. But why did you join up?’
‘Because the pay was good. Because my father and mother wanted me to. Because it made them proud to see me in a uniform, to see me employed. To see me rise through the ranks because I am a fast learner and speak six languages.’
‘Six?’ Persey found it hard not to be distracted by this. They were both quiet for a moment. ‘You’re on the wrong side,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘Yes?’ She moved back in her chair to look down at him. ‘Do you mean that?’
He nodded and looked tired suddenly, rose and walked towards the window.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ he said. ‘War.’
‘What did you think it would be like?’ she asked softly.
He looked back at her. ‘Not like this. Trampling on nations to such an extent. Germany’s rise to greatness after all these years – it is coming at a cost.’
She had nothing to say to that. She had not seen what he had seen, but she had read enough about how so many lives were being lost, so many men sent to fight, so many countries forced to surrender in the end as Hitler’s dominance over Europe continued. And now the Jews were being persecuted in even greater number throughout the rest of mainland Europe, driven out of towns, out of their homes and jobs, segregated. How far would it go?
‘Can you understand why I want to be here? Why I want to be with old friends who find themselves in such a place at such atime? The closer the army advanced to the British mainland, the more I worried for you all. And then, the army was here. And so was I.’
